


The Forest of Violets

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Angst and Tragedy, Knifeplay, M/M, Other, background implied Ashelix, hatefuck, nonbinary yuri, past character deaths (not portrayed)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Years after the war in Fodlan has ended, Felix and Yuri still find each other sometimes. To hunt each other. To fight. To fuck.Anything that might help them forget.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	The Forest of Violets

**Author's Note:**

> CW: This is a hatefuck with knives and blood. 
> 
> I don't know how violets work and I don't particularly care.
> 
> This now has a companion piece! You can read them in either order, it just builds out the world of this story and shows the Ashe/Felix side of things. [Read it here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395607)

Felix stepped lightly, placing his feet deliberately among the detritus of the forest. Crisped leaves lined with frost crackled in slow motion as he advanced between clustered trees, dark blue boughs crowding in like soldiers gathering for a skirmish, waiting for a command, silent and sharp and faceless in the gloom. 

Felix stopped, listening. Wind rustled the lace of the treetops, a breath passing through the battalion around him. He could almost believe the trees were murmuring, sharing their fears and anxieties in hushed voices.

The wind stopped. The voices went silent. Felix was left in deadly stillness, an eerie quiet like the hum that followed battlefield carnage. 

Then a twig snapped. Felix spun toward it, crunching leaves as he turned. His sword was unwieldy but he angled it between the trees, refusing to sheathe it. 

He waited, straining his ears, not daring to move. The trees stilled, soldiers awaiting direction. Felix would not offer any; he’d sworn off leading people to their deaths long ago.

#

Someone with sense would have ended this game already. Someone with sense would have left with their life and never returned. Someone with sense would have arrived better armored.

Yuri lived on the edges of things.

They crouched behind a tree. Felix wasn’t moving, but he still brandished that ridiculous sword. It would be useless in the forest Yuri had chosen for this hunt, but that was half the fun, wasn’t it? 

Yuri regarded the frost tracing the leaves and trunks. They didn’t need to do this here, so close to Fraldarius territory – so close to what had been Fraldarius territory before Felix gave it up to the Empire. But Yuri knew this was the best way to draw Felix out, the best way to goad him into responding. 

They slipped a knife into their hand.

#

Felix paced among the underbrush. The cold left the ground hard-packed, but also coated in the discarded, dead remains of everything the forest could shed. The leaves were nearly black, the violets mostly wilted.

Another stick creaked. Felix spun toward the sound, abandoning caution as he rushed at his foe. He had no use for stealth now that the hunt had begun. 

He found Yuri behind a tree and lashed out. Yuri turned his sword away harmlessly, sending Felix stumbling past them. 

Felix whirled, putting his sword up defensively, but Yuri wasn’t attacking. They leaned against a tree, twirling a knife. 

“Your hair is long,” Yuri said. 

“So?” 

Yuri shrugged. “Just an observation. It’s been some time since we’ve done this. You haven’t been taking care of it.” 

Felix didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he shifted his feet and sword, easing into a ready posture. 

“You should look after yourself,” Yuri said.

“Why?” 

Yuri smiled, one side of their mouth curling upward. “Fair point.” 

They pushed away from the tree nonchalantly, as though Felix’s sword wasn’t pointed right at their chest. Yuri swatted at the sword with their knife, batting the tip aside. Felix took a step back, ensuring Yuri didn’t slip past the point and get inside his range where he’d be exposed and unguarded. But Yuri seemed more interested in testing the barrier than crossing it, at least for now. 

Felix swiped at the knife, but it was too nimble for him to catch. Yuri would have to commit to something before Felix could respond. 

They seemed determined to make Felix wait. They retreated, regarding Felix more like a curious bird than a foe. 

“Oh, but you are tense, my prideful lion,” Yuri said. 

“Don’t call me that.” 

Yuri tilted their head. “Which part do you hate the most, I wonder. The pride or the lion?” 

_The lion,_ Felix thought, but he refused to give Yuri the satisfaction of hearing it. They both knew he was no lion, hadn’t been for many years. He hunted lions, slaughtered them in cold blood, left their lairs in ruins. That was the bargain he’d made when he’d left Garreg Mach with Edelgard. 

“He wasn’t truly a lion either, you know,” Yuri said. 

“Shut up.”

Yuri shrugged a shoulder. “I suppose you’re right though. When you die among lions, does it matter if you were merely a hummingbird? All blood looks the same once it’s spilled.” 

Felix didn’t bother speaking, swinging his sword in the broadest arc he could manage. It was a ridiculous attack, they both knew it, and Yuri danced easily out of range. 

“That’ll do,” Yuri said. “Let’s play.” 

They turned, dashing into the forest.

#

That bit about the hummingbird may have been too much, Yuri thought as they fled, but Felix was always more fun when he hunted with a purpose. And judging from the red gleam in those amber eyes, he had a powerful purpose propelling him after Yuri now.

Yuri sprinted between the trees, jumping nimbly through them, leaping over brambles, skipping past tangles of underbrush. They could hear Felix somewhere behind them, loud, crashing through the forest like a bear barreling artlessly onward. He was probably still waving that ridiculous sword around, despite how it would hinder him. 

Yuri slowed, just a touch. It wouldn’t do to actually get out of reach. The point was not to escape. Even so, they needed an advantage, a trick, or this time Felix really might kill them. The unspoken rules of this little game didn’t forbid such a result; that would take away the excitement.

The ground skewed downward abruptly. Yuri nearly lost their footing, sliding to a stop partway down the slope. They rushed to a boulder at the side of the obvious path their slide had cut into the leaves carpeting the ground. 

Then, they waited.

#

Felix stopped when he saw the track leading down the slope. He forced himself to walk, bracing against trees so he wouldn’t slip.

The terrain would aid Yuri, who could be hiding anywhere. They’d clearly recovered from the slide at some point and were waiting to leap out at Felix.

He searched for evidence of their presence, but found little other than the leaves scraped off the ground by sliding feet, cutting an even darker path among the navy of the leaf cover.

Felix paused near the end of the trail, sword held at the ready, looking around, straining his ears, searching for any clue that could lead him to his prey. 

For an instant, the forest shifted. For an instant, the trees truly were soldiers, all clad in blue, arrayed against him. The wind whispered among the crowns, _traitor_ combing through the interlaced leaves forming the lattice caging Felix into this place so close to Fraldarius, so close to the ruin of Fraldarius, the ruin of all he’d grown up thinking he’d protect. All he’d betrayed the moment he’d left the monastery with Edelgard. 

“I was _right_ ,” he snarled, swinging at a tree. His sword grazed the trunk. Dark sap oozed out like blood, adding to the carnage Felix had left in these lands. 

They’d meant to end the crest system, the tyranny that had pushed some down simply because they were born “commoners” and not royalty. They’d been fighting for a just world, an equitable world.

“I was right.” 

This time he swung harder, striking the tree with a force that shuddered down his arms. The sword nearly got stuck in that pale flesh, but he yanked it free, hacking again and again, watching flakes of bark fly with every hit. 

The sword stuck in the trunk. He yanked, even putting his foot against the tree for leverage, but he couldn’t free it. 

He was still pulling when something crashed into him, throwing him to the ground.

#

Yuri knew they were losing Felix the moment he started yelling at a tree. The hummingbird bit had definitely been too much. Yuri should have known better. Felix lived only on extremes: Love or hatred, friend or enemy, life or death.

Yuri lived in grays, in the spaces between, on the edges of everything. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for them to sneak up on Felix and tackle him to the ground.

They tumbled to the forest floor. Yuri managed to land on top, but that was a thin comfort with the state Felix was in. He immediately started grabbing for weapons. Yuri had to grapple to keep Felix’s hands away from his knives. 

Yuri kept him down as long as they could, but eventually Felix managed to buck up. He tried to flip them, but Yuri kept the momentum moving, pinning Felix under them.

Yuri had a knife to Felix’s neck instantly, pausing his frantic struggling. They weren’t pressing, just holding it there on Felix’s skin, watching the gooseflesh ripple away from the blade, observing the bob in Felix’s throat as he tried to swallow around cold steel. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve given up, friend,” Yuri said.

#

Far from it.

Felix had managed to grasp one of Yuri’s hands, but the other was, rather obviously, a problem. Yuri could end the game with a flick of their wrist. They could end it accidentally. 

It was thrilling.

Felix’s blood raced for the first time in moons. His breath quickened. He was sweating despite the cold, but it wasn’t from the exertion of the hunt. 

He leaned into the knife blade, let it press harder against his skin. He grasped Yuri’s lavender hair with his free hand. Yuri’s breaths grew more shallow, more haggard, even from their position atop him. 

“Are you going to kill me or not?” Felix said.

“Isn’t it more fun not to know?”

Felix snarled at that, lip curling. He always knew. When it was time for killing, he always knew that he would do it, could do it. That’s why even when confronted with a face printed onto his heart, a face that had disarmed him so many times with the softness of mossy green eyes, with the glow of scattered freckles, with the kindness of unwavering smiles, he did what he had to do. 

But he didn’t _need_ to do this. The war was over, long over, and Yuri had never been part of it. Perhaps that was why this audacious indulgence set his heart pounding in a way that the cold act of killing never had. 

Thinking too much made him slow, sloppy. Yuri was able to raise the knife and jab it into the dirt right beside Felix’s head. He did not gasp, but there was a certain thrill to how deliberate and close that blade was. 

Yuri leaned down. As they did, their hips slid against Felix. It might have been incidental, but nothing with Yuri was incidental. The glide of those hips was as deliberate as the knife beside Felix’s head. 

Yuri grabbed Felix’s shirt, simply holding him. Already, the tenuous veneer of this game was splintering, cracking. Already, it was becoming less a hunt and more a dance. 

Felix gripped the hand on his chest, flipping them both over before Yuri could react. The momentum sent them rolling down the slope, tumbling through frost-laced leaves until a tree struck Felix’s back and knocked the breath from his lungs. 

Even so, the tumble gave Felix a space, a chance. He took it, scrambling for his knife as he tried to regain his breath. 

This time, it was Felix pressing a knife to Yuri’s throat. He did not sit on Yuri, but hunched over them, his knee near their crotch, a promise and a threat. His free hand was in their hair, tilting their head back to expose more of the long, pale line of their throat.

He let the knife prickle, let it bite just enough, then took it away, observing the pearls of crimson sitting dew-like on Yuri’s neck. 

Felix repositioned the blade at the side of Yuri’s neck, ready to plunge it in in an instant, before lowering his lips toward those garnet pearls. Yuri shuddered when Felix traced his tongue along their skin. They sighed, rolling from shoulders to hips as the sensation washed through them. 

Felix was yanked back by his hair. Yuri pulled on the long, inky tail trailing down Felix’s back to his waist. He gasped as his lips were forced away. 

Yuri was smiling at him, sharper than his knife. It twisted Felix’s gut, desire warring with disgust inside him. There was no denying Yuri was beautiful. It was Felix who was ugly, Felix who was twisted and foul. The very thought Yuri would want to touch someone so stained in blood sickened Felix, left his mouth sour and stale despite Yuri’s sweet taste. 

But no matter how foul Yuri found him, every time their hunt devolved into this.

Felix abandoned the knife, the last bit of stagecraft trying to conceal the true nature of this little game, this desperate play. Even as he grasped Yuri’s tunic, yanked their neck back to his lips, he wondered if anything about this had ever been real. The longer the hunt lasted, the more quickly they seemed to come to this, to the truth of things. 

Yuri snaked a leg up over Felix’s hips, encouraging him closer. Their bodies met in a tumult of heat and cloth and friction. Felix rolled down even as Yuri arched up to meet him. Felix kept sucking at Yuri’s neck, leaving pink spots to compliment the beads of red. 

Yuri pushed – hard. Felix fell back. He had only a moment to feel confused, then Yuri was in his lap, both of them sitting up now. 

Yuri writhed atop Felix, even as they started plucking at the buttons and clasps on Felix’s shirt, searching for a path to the skin beneath. Cold air whisked away some of the heat that had built under his clothing as Yuri opened Felix’s shirt, pushing it aside. The coolness was short-lived as Yuri got their mouth on that exposed skin, nipping and licking their way along Felix’s chest. 

Felix gave in, or perhaps gave up, gripping Yuri’s ass. Yuri’s desire to defile themself was none of his concern. When Felix squeezed, Yuri murmured against his chest, their teeth sinking in. Felix drew in a hiss at the bite, jerked Yuri close enough that he could feel Yuri’s erection against him. It was more a challenge than an enticement and Felix was determined to meet it. 

Felix snuck a hand between them, tearing at laces and obstructions. There was a wet smack – Yuri’s lips popping free of Felix’s skin – then a gasp as Yuri jerked upright. Felix had both their cocks in his hand now, squeezing them together in his grasp. 

Yuri smirked at Felix, clinging to his shoulders, chewing at their glossy bottom lip. Felix hated the playfulness in that look, the flippancy. 

He jerked his hand along both of them. Yuri’s smirk widened to a sigh. Their head tilted back, lavender hair spilling over their shoulders. Felix kept pumping and Yuri swayed into his hand, nails digging into his shoulders. Yuri’s panting was loud in the frozen forest, their breath puffing out in hot clouds. 

Felix could feel himself getting too hard in his own hand, twitching, leaking. He stopped and Yuri whined. Before they could speak, he shoved them out of his lap and stood.

#

Yuri lay on the ground trying to catch their breath while Felix paced over them. His cock was jutting out of his undone pants, hard and aching. Felix took off his shirt almost irritably, throwing it aside like it had offended him in some way.

Felix scooped a knife off the ground, then sat in the dirt. He motioned with the tip of the blade as he said, “Come here.” 

Perhaps someone with sense would have declined. But even before the world ended, Yuri had had little sense and even less to lose. 

They crawled toward Felix.

#

Yuri shed their clothing as they moved toward Felix, arriving at Felix’s lap naked and shivering. Felix left them that way a moment, eyes trailing over their pale, smooth skin, still remarkably unblemished despite the ravages everyone else had experienced.

Yuri was sitting before Felix now, waiting as though the knife in Felix’s hand didn’t bother them at all. And perhaps it didn’t.

Felix’s eyes trickled over their chest, along their torso, down to their thighs. And there they were, the sparse, infrequent spots freckling their skin. 

Felix reached for Yuri’s thighs. He hated his hand for trembling along the way. His fingers grazed those unlikely spots, but he felt nothing. There was no tingle of pleasure. The skin wasn’t raised. If Felix closed his eyes, he wouldn’t even know they were there. 

“Shall I draw more on for you next time?” Yuri said. “You can call me by his name if you like.”

Felix was very still for a moment. His teeth ground together. His hand lingered on Yuri’s thigh. He looked at the blue-black leaves beneath him. 

Then he grabbed Yuri, heard a little “oof” of surprise as they hit the ground with Felix on top of them. Felix scrambled out of his pants before he put the knife back against Yuri’s neck. 

“Don’t speak,” Felix said. 

Yuri watched him, face neutral aside from the sheen in those lavender eyes. No, not lavender. Violet. Violet like the flowers he’d loved so much, the flowers dying all around them in this blighted forest. 

Felix looked away, focused on the mechanics of the thing: Oil he shamefully kept among his clothing, never admitting to himself why he always had it along during these hunts; his own slick fingers, scissoring, impatient. He was hasty and sloppy, his hand trembling as he kept the knife against Yuri, who lay still beneath him. 

They only reacted when Felix lowered onto them, huffing a stifled whimper. Felix refused to look at their face now, thinking only about the stretch and burn entering his body. It was a pleasant sort of pain, a distracting sort of pain. It passed all too quickly, his body distressingly eager. 

It was hard to keep hold of the knife as Felix sank down. The tip of the blade trailed over Yuri’s torso and Felix heard a sharp intake of breath, felt a shudder of excitement pass through the body beneath him. 

Felix braced against Yuri’s torso, rocking atop their cock. He squeezed his eyes shut, grit his teeth to hold back any sound that might reveal too much. Yuri swayed under him, complementing his movements, oddly attuned. But, then, they always were. They always pushed enough to get all of what they wanted, and nothing that they didn’t. 

Felix didn’t care to linger on the thought of how easily they manipulated him during this repetitive game. He shifted his hips, taking Yuri deeper, until he felt a spark of sensation, the bright, blinding compliment to the pain this had all started with. It erased the memory of any discomfort, any burn or ache he might have felt. He forgot the knife, knew only that the hilt was against his hand, the blade somewhere between his body and Yuri’s. There was only the consuming bliss he was pounding into his own ass and chest and throat with each motion of his hips. 

Felix’s long tail of hair must have slipped over his shoulder because he felt Yuri tugging on it, drawing him closer. He opened his eyes, saw Yuri flushed and rasping for breath beneath him. Yuri brought Felix’s hair to their face, eyes fluttering shut as they seemed to smell or taste it. 

Yuri moaned, hips bucking up, cock driving into Felix in a way that made him emit his own cry alongside theirs. The sensation was almost too much, but the pleasure it left in its wake had Felix teetering toward the edge. 

Yuri must have noticed. They shifted their hand to Felix’s cock, beginning to stroke it, wrapping it in Felix’s own hair. Felix choked off a gasp, eyes squeezing shut once more. 

That hand knew him well, knew how hard to stroke, how fast. Knew how to tease just enough, how to drag out sounds Felix attempted to clench behind his teeth. Yuri’s grip was sure and steady and reliable. And for an instant, eyes closed, sparks of pleasure popping in the darkness, his body burning despite the cold, Felix forgot exactly whose hand it was. 

He came that way, not thinking about the person beneath him, transported for a moment to a time when knives were never part of the play. He spilled over the hand stroking him, digging his nails into the skin beneath him as he grunted, clenching around the cock inside him. 

Then Yuri’s cry interrupted his reverie, sharp and high and wrong. 

They twitched inside him, then slid out to leave him sticky with their mess. 

Felix climbed off Yuri, put his back to them, sat on the cold ground gathering himself. Perhaps he should have insisted on this never happening again. Perhaps he should have killed Yuri when he had the chance so this pathetic scene couldn’t keep playing out over and over. 

Someone with sense would have ended this game long ago. Someone with sense would have left with their life and never returned. Someone with sense would have arrived better armored.

Felix lived on the edge of things, in between kingdoms, in between worlds. He lived in the chasms he’d carved into the continent. He walked along the borders of the graves he’d dug himself. 

A knife sank into the earth before Felix. When he looked up, Yuri stood over him, already dressed. 

“Until next time, friend,” they said.

Someone with sense would have picked up the knife and ensured there was no next time.

But Felix lived on the outskirts of everything.

He watched Yuri leave, melting into the purple-gray shadows of the cold forest. Then he put on his own clothes, retrieved his weapons and continued on his weary way. There was a grave in Gaspard whose flowers had probably withered by now. This forest was full of violets, some still living, if one knew where to look.

**Author's Note:**

> This now has a companion piece! You can read them in either order, it just builds out the world of this story and shows the Ashe/Felix side of things. [Read it here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395607)
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!
> 
> Did you know there’s an actual Ashelix Week coming up??? Oct 17-24, 2020, will be Ashelix Week. Come create some good, good Ashelix.


End file.
